Taking action shots of dogs

You’d think it was difficult. I mean dogs can move really quickly, right? But
it’s easy if you know the right settings.

A shutter speed of 800th second froze the movement of
the droplets of water in this shot.

Why dogs?

Dogs are great to photograph for a whole bunch of reasons, including:

They aren’t afraid of us, which means you don’t have to spend an
afternoon sneaking up on them

They’re highly social, which means they interact with other dogs in ways
that are interesting to capture

They’re the perfect size for a camera lens to focus on

They come running when you call (I wish I could say that about fairy-wrens.)

Taking photos of fast-moving dogs is seriously good practice for working with other
fast-moving animals

A lot of municipal councils have parks or parts of beaches set aside for dogs to run
around off their leads. I recommend going to one of those because not only will it give
you access to more dogs, but they’ll be better dogs for photography too. That’s
because they’re likely to be running around and playing with each other.

Settings

I almost always use the same settings when photographing active dogs. From here on
I’ll describe them.

Giving a dog a toy to play with (that means giving a dog a
toy to rip into pieces) will give you plenty of action for photos.

Shutter speed priority mode

Dogs move quickly, which means the potential for a lot of motion blur in your shots.
And the easiest way to manage or eliminate motion blur is by using shutter speed priority
mode (also known as time value priority.)

I like to freeze the motion quite a lot. Now, that’s a matter of personal taste
rather than any sort of rule, because the right kind of motion blur can give a wonderful
feeling of movement in a shot. So just remember that the slower your shutter speed,
the more motion blur you’ll get.

Running towards me at about 30 or 40 kph, this pooch was
still in perfect focus thanks to modern auto-focusing. There’s just no way in a
million years I’d be able to do that manually.

Having said that I usually go for the “frozen moment” type of image that
you get with fast shutter speeds. So I usually set my shutter speed for 1,000th second.
If the light is fairly weak then 800th of a second will be my choice.

More than one focus point

It’s insanely difficult aiming a camera at a fast-moving dog with enough
accuracy to always keep the dog in the middle of the frame. Therefore I select the
middle focus point as my primary focus point and use a feature which my camera calls
focus point expansion. What that means is that the focus point I select (the middle
one) acts as the primary one, but if the dog drifts away from it the camera will
activate the adjacent points. That makes it easier for me and for the camera.

Dogs are highly expressive creatures. Expect to capture all sorts
of facial contortions.

If your camera doesn’t have focus point expansion or something similar, then
just select a small cluster of focus points near the middle of your frame, instead of
just a single one.

And if your camera doesn’t give you the option to have a small cluster of focus
points running — with some cameras it’s either one focus point or all of
them — then I’d suggest having just the middle focus point activated.

Continuous focus

Because the distances to the dog are constantly changing, continuous focus (also
known as servo focus) is essential.

Fast burst of shots

Dogs tend to be hesitant at first and then they explode into action. Things will
suddenly be happening so quickly that you’ll never be able to judge the best
timing for a single shot. In fact your eyes will barely be able to see everything.
That’s why I set my camera to take continuous fast bursts of exposures instead
of just a single shot.

So here’s how I work: I keep a dog in the frame and the shutter button held
half way down to ensure that the moment the fun starts the dog will already be in focus. When things
start happening I press the shutter button fully down to start firing and hold it down
for as long as the action is happening. Don’t worry about getting too many photos.
You can always delete the dud shots later. Just concentrate on keeping the best parts
of the action inside the frame.

Longest possible focus length

Here’s a little bit of trickery. I took two photos of
the same dog, as a puppy and then 12 months later when it was fully grown. Then I used
Photoshop to merge them into the one scene. The result is two ages of the one dog
running alongside herself.

When a dog starts bounding towards you it’s going to reach you in seconds, so
the further away you start taking a burst of photos the better. That means a long focal
length. The best images usually happen about two thirds of the dog’s distance to
you as the animal begins to fill the frame but if you wait until it reaches that point
before you start taking pics then you might miss some good stuff happening earlier, and
your camera will probably struggle to find focus before it’s too late.

So I usually wait until the dog is a reasonable distance from me, running my way,
and then I take a burst of shots until the dog has run past me.

Does this system work 100% of the time?

Nope. Expect to get some blurry shots where the wrong part of the dog was in focus.
That’s to be expected because what you’re getting your camera to do is
quite tricky. But persevere with it and you’re more than likely to get quite a
few really nice shots. Using this system my success rate is about 8 out of 10 shots being
tack sharp, and then perhaps one in 10 of those shots being ones that I really like
for artistic reasons. So don’t worry about taking heaps of shots to get those
half dozen or more keepers. You’re not wasting film because you’re shooting
digital.

A little bit of protocol

If the dog I want to photograph isn’t my own then I usually wander up to the
owner and ask if it’s okay if I take photos. I’ve actually met some great
people that way, including some other photographers. If you aren’t planning on
selling the photos or anything that could get the owner into some kind of trouble then
most people are more than happy to let you take pictures, and will often give you a
hand by calling the dog to run towards you. If you do plan on selling the photos,
especially if it’s for use in advertising or the promotion of something, then
you should also make sure you have permission for that from the dog’s owner.